It was a task far more difficult than the checking of official
irregularities, to deliver the provincials from the oppressive
ascendency of Roman capital. Its power could not be directly broken
without applying means which were still more dangerous than the evil;
the government could for the time being abolish only isolated abuses--
as when Caesar for instance prohibited the employment of the title
of state-envoy for financial purposes--and meet manifest acts of violence
and palpable usury by a sharp application of the general penal laws
and of the laws as to usury, which extended also to the provinces;(88)
but a more radical cure of the evil was only to be expected
from the reviving prosperity of the provincials under a better
administration.

Temporary enactments, to relieve the insolvency
of particular provinces, had been issued on several occasions
in recent times. Caesar himself had in 694 when governor
of Further Spain assigned to the creditors two thirds
of the income of their debtors in order to pay themselves
from that source. Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor
had directly cancelled a portion of the arrears of interest
which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion
assigned to the creditors a fourth part of the produce of the lands
of their debtors, as well as a suitable proportion of the profits
accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour. We are not expressly
informed that Caesar after the civil war instituted similar
general liquidations of debt in the provinces; yet from what
has just been remarked and from what was done in the case of Italy,(89)
it can hardly be doubted that Caesar likewise directed his efforts
towards this object, or at least that it formed part of his plan.

While thus the Imperator, as far as lay within human power,
relieved the provincials from the oppressions of the magistrates
and capitalists of Rome, it might at the same time be with certaint
expected from the government to which he imparted fresh vigour,
that it would scare off the wild border-peoples and disperse
the freebooters by land and sea, as the rising sun chases away
the mist. However the old wounds might still smart, with Caesar
there appeared for the sorely-tortured subjects the dawn
of a more tolerable epoch, the first intelligent and humane government
that had appeared for centuries, and a policy of peace which rested
not on cowardice but on strength. Well might the subjects above all
mourn along with the best Romans by the bier of the great liberator.